I have so many t-shirts (and I refuse to part with them unless they break down) that I have most of them in three hampers, one of which has one broken plastic handle, which is a sign that 1) I or my family has had these hampers for a long time and 2) I have a lot of t-shirts. The rest I have come to consider my "roster" of t-shirts I use every spring through fall. (I have a rotation of long underwear that I use exclusively for winter.) I don't remember when I implemented this, but some time ago I decided that at some point in the spring or summer, I would swap out the "roster" of t-shirts I have been using for a season or so and replace them with some t-shirts from a hamper. It's not all because I use only one drawer for t-shirts, and it's a small dresser, and like I said, I have stashed a lot of t-shirts into each of these three drawers.
Me being both an OCD fiend and a Pisces, I want to keep things fair and even. So, in this system, I would (cross your fingers) get through every single t-shirt I have (not counting any new ones I buy) ... uh, every six years or so ... ? That's a long time, and it may not be, uh, worth it to only wear a t-shirt every six years or so -- and, despite me saying I use only one small compartment for the ones I use, I would be wearing them only, what, three or four times per year, max. But again, I'm not throwing them away.
Still, while I say I have a system, I don't have a precise system. And I could be better at it. Like, for example, by keeping track of the hampers. You see, I stash my hampers in my closet. But they're not in really any order, per se. I have a fourth hamper in there for my pants, which I also rotate, but not really. And the other three hampers I kind of find room in my closet around this pants/jeans hamper.
This lack of order (disorder?) reared its ugly head, or it really bothered me, last year when I was doing my annual rotation. I took out a hamper and began replacing my t-shirts ... and then I looked at the t-shirts I was rotating in and it looked like they were the ones I was wearing the year prior, in 2020. I didn't know for sure; it was the start of the pandemic, sure, but they just ... seemed like the same t-shirts I wore the year before. And even though I wasn't 100% certain, I was convinced that these weren't the t-shirts I should be wearing in 2021.
So I began putting the new t-shirts back in the hamper. But I didn't know, and/or I couldn't remember, which t-shirts I should be using, or in other words I couldn't tell which t-shirts I hadn't used most recently. And it was pretty damn frustrating, to say the least, that I didn't know which ones I should rotate in. So I just picked a different hamper, shrugged my shoulders, and replaced them. The ones I replaced them with -- the ones I wore from 2021 to about a couple weeks ago, seemed like ones I hadn't worn since 2016.
In my frustration last year I asked myself why in the hell didn't I label the hampers. You know, just getting a few slips of paper, writing on them something like, "Last used in (year)." I was beating myself up over not thinking to do that so I could avoid such a situation; I would totally forget which hamper I last used by the time the next year rolls around, so I could just rely on the note slipped into, like the side of the hamper.
But I didn't do that then. And, honestly, I haven't done that now. Yeah, I should have done that then, but ... uh, I couldn't find the right slips of paper. I think last year I made a mental note that this hamper right here in the closet will be where I put the one I have used most recently, and then this other one on the other side of the closet is the "next-older" one (if that makes any sense), and finally this hamper under that most recent hamper is the "oldest" hamper and the one I will use next year. Maybe. Whatever; I could be wrong, but there's no way to tell at this point, so that's the decision I've made.
I'm looking to my left and see a bunch of slips of paper. Mother keeps scrap paper just because. Guess I could use them right now to label my hampers. I think I shall do that.
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